Girls beat up Iran cleric over dress code

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Iranian women can be subjected to harsh punishment for small infractions of the country's Islamic dress code.

Story highlights

Two girls beat up a cleric on his way to noon prayers, news agency says

He asked one of them to cover herself to comply with Islamic hijab

The girl told him to cover his eyes, he said

The cleric was hospitalized for three days

They may be a far cry from their Western counterparts fighting for the acceptance to breast-feed -- or go topless -- in public, but two girls clobbered a cleric recently in a small town in Iran when he admonished one of them to cover herself more completely.

The cleric said he asked "politely," but the girl's angry reaction and some pugilistic double-teaming with her friend landed the holy man in the hospital, according to an account Monday in the semiofficial Mehr News Agency.

Hojatoleslam Ali Beheshti said he encountered the girls on his way to the mosque in the village of Shahmirzad for noon prayers in late August.

"She responded by telling me to cover my eyes, which was very insulting to me," Beheshti said. So he asked her a second time to cover up and also to put a lid on what he felt was verbal abuse.

She hit the man of the cloth, and he hit the ground.

"I don't remember what happened after that," he said. "I just felt her kicks and heard her insults."

Beheshti, who emerged from the infirmary three days later, said he did not file a complaint against the girls.

But he doesn't mind the local prosecutor's investigation into the matter either "as long as the case helps the cause of Islamic hijab."

The girls may have put the "jab" into "hijab," but fighting with morality police or private individuals telling women to cover up is rare in small towns. It's more common in larger cities, where women are more likely to take a stand.